Tammaro's Body Identified by Medical Examiners Office

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The Broward County, Fla., Medical Examiners Office has positively identified the body found at the bottom of a South Florida canal Monday as trainer John Tammaro Jr., who had been missing since Feb. 25.

According to a spokesman from the medical examiners office, though the body had been in water for some time, it had not badly decomposed, which allowed for identification from a driver's license found on Tammaro's body. There were no signs of trauma or foul play,though routine drug and alcohol tests were performed, and the results are pending.

"All along we were afraid of foul play," the trainer's son, John Tammaro III, said Tuesday. "So I'm relieved about that. But finding the body hasn't given me the closure I thought it would."

On Monday, Steve Danker, a diver from Special Response Diving Technologies, was in Miramar in the C-9 canal, a waterway that runs east to west from the Atlantic Ocean into the Everglades. He performed routine maintenance to clear the canal of debris. At approximately 12:15 p.m., he came across Tammaro's 1987 beige Mercedes 420, the vehicle he was seen driving when as he left Gulfstream Park, approximately 15 miles to the east. That alone, according to Miramar Police Captain Bruce Keesling, was unusual.

"It's not unheard of to have vehicles in those canals, but we wouldn't expect to find a Mercedes," he said, noting that the access to the C-9 canal was via rough terrain that would more likely lend itself to an off-road or 4-wheel drive vehicle. The canal, he said, is far enough off of paved roadways that a car could not wind up in it after a driver lost control. "He had to have made a conscious effort to get out to the canal," Keesling said. "There was some reason for this vehicle to have wound up there."

While neither Keesling nor Tammaro's family could speculate about that reason, the 75-year-old trainer had been in ill health prior to his disappearance and was three weeks removed from liver surgery.

Though a comprehensive search, including canal dives, had been performed in the weeks since Tammaro's disappearance, the area of the C-9 canal in the far southwest corner of Broward County where he was found had not been searched. "It was not on his normal route home," Hallandale Beach Police spokesman Andy Kasper said. "There are lots of waterways in South Florida, and we had no reason to think he would be in that area."

Born on Sept 22, 1925, in Baltimore, Md., Tammaro began in racing as a jockey, and later became a leading trainer at tracks throughout the country, including Pimlico Race Course, Monmouth Park, Calder Race Course, Gulfstream, and Delaware Park. He served a stint in the 1970s and 1980s as the private trainer for Kinghaven Farms, for which he trained five Canadian champions, including Eclipse Award winner Deputy Minister.

Tammaro is survived by sons John III and Mike; daughters Cathy, Michelle, Toni, Jacquelyn, and Leah; and 10 grandchildren.

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